The legal principle established is that a subsequent purchaser during the pendency of a Civil Suit may not necessarily be impleaded as a necessary party, especially if the purchase occurred with knowledge of the pending Suit.

JUDGMENT :

MEENAKSHI I. MEHTA, J.

Feeling aggrieved by the order dated 05.11.2022 (Annexure P-1) passed by learned Additional Civil Judge (Senior Division), Amritsar (for short ‘the trial Court’), whereby the application (Annexure P-2) moved by the petitioner-applicant (here-in-after to be referred as ‘the applicant’) under Order 1 Rule 10 read with Section 151 CPC for being impleaded as defendant No.9 in the Civil Suit, filed by respondent No.1-plaintiff (for short ‘the plaintiff’) against respondents No.2 to 8-defendants (here-in-after to be referred as ‘the defendants’), has been dismissed, he (applicant) has preferred the instant revision petition.

2. Bereft of unnecessary details, the facts, culminating in the filing of this revision petition, are that the plaintiff filed a Civil Suit against the defendants for seeking a decree for declaration to the effect that the sale-deed dated 09.02.2012 executed by one Gurbax Singh in respect of the suit property was illegal, null and void, while further praying for the grant of permanent injunction to restrain the defendants from dispossessing him from the said property and also for the relief of mandatory injunction, by directing them (defendants) to remove the super structure existing in the same and also the ‘malba’ (debris/rubble) from there. The applicant moved the above-referred application, pleading therein that he had purchased the suit property from defendant Bikramjit Singh vide the sale-deed executed on 13.12.2013 and registered on 16.12.2013 and is a bona-fide purchaser of the same and is in possession thereof as its owner and thus, he is an interested and necessary party to the said Suit. This application has been dismissed by the trial Court vide the impugned order.

3. I have heard learned counsel for the petitioner-applicant in the present revision petition, at the preliminary stage and have also perused the file carefully.

4. Learned counsel for the applicant has contended that the applicant has purchased the suit property vide the afore-mentioned sale-deed for consideration and thus, he is a bona-fide purchaser having right, title and interest in the same and therefore, he is a necessary party to the Civil Suit and as soon as he came to know about the pendency thereof, he immediately moved the above-said application for being impleaded as the defendant in the same but however, the trial Court has wrongly dismissed his application vide the impugned order and hence, the same is not legally sustainable at all and deserves to be set-aside. To buttress his contentions, he has placed reliance upon the verdict, as rendered by the Apex Court in Thomson Press (India) Limited Versus Nanak Builders and Investors Private Limited and others, (2013) 5 Supreme Court Cases 397.

5. However, the afore-raised contentions are devoid of any merit because the trial Court has categorically mentioned in Para No.8 in the impugned order (Annexure P-1) that the said Civil Suit was instituted on 11.09.2012 and the injunction application had been allowed on 10.05.2013 whereas the applicant got the sale-deed executed/registered by defendant No.8 in his favour on 16.12.2013, i.e during the pendency of the said Suit. In these circumstances, Section 52 of the Transfer of Property Act becomes applicable to the above-mentioned sale transaction. To add to it, on being posed a query, during the course of arguments, regarding the status of the proceedings in the said Suit, learned counsel for the applicant has informed this Court that the trial Court had already partly heard the arguments in the said Civil Suit, meaning thereby that the same has almost reached the final stage of its decision/adjudication.

6. Further, it is pertinent to point it out here that the applicant has only submitted the reply, filed by defendants No.7 & 8 to his afore-said application, as Annexure P-3 and he has not placed the reply, as filed by the plaintiff to this application, on the record for the reasons best known to him but how